Personal Aspirations

Well, my last post was talking about goals. But it was in pretty general terms. So it's time I turned that on myself. I'm not really sure how to approach this topic to be honest. I think it's extremely important for your emotional and spiritual well being that you don't remain stagnant in life. And to be honest, I'm probably best described as someone who stagnates and then sprints a quarter mile before returning to stagnation. It's a round I repeat through. Not that that's a good thing, or something I should accept, but it's what has been true nonetheless.

I've been thinking a lot about how to jump start my life again. I got home late last night and was thinking about this. And I thought, well, I should start immediately. And of course I thought, no... it's late, I'll start tomorrow, not today. But that's the same thought I've had more than one night. And spiritual changes don't come about through procrastination. So even though it was late I decided to make sure I started working on my goals then and there.

I have always thought that journal writing was important for me. For one, I've always loved being able to look back on the memories I have recorded in my journals throughout the years. I've had my ups and downs when it comes to journal writing though. Setting aside all the talk from the prophets about journal writing and why it's important (and their reasons are all true)... For me personally... writing in my journal is a release. It's a friend that can always be there. It's something that always listens, and always understands. And it helps organize my thoughts in preparation for prayer. So that's there's an awful lot of reasons why I need to write in my journal every day.

I've always struggled with giving personal prayers. The moments I've been successful are powerful memories filled with tears, relief, joy, Godly sorrow, and love. And wouldn't it be wonderful to receive those experiences every day? I think so. It's one thing to pray every night... it's another thing to commune every night and day.

Reading scriptures is one of those building blocks. Without it I think our foundation becomes incredibly shaky. Satan's very good at spiritual Jenga. And I don't know about you, but I'm trying not to fall down. Reading scriptures used to be really hard for me growing up because I just hated re-reading books. I've gotten better with that in the last five years or so in my life I think. But that doesn't mean I'm a perfect scripture reader either, just that I've gotten better about re-reading books. I think my favorite semester here at college (reading scriptures wise) was my first semester. I read my scriptures twice a day. In the mornings I read for twenty minutes just going straight through. And at night I would just flip to a random page and read until I felt I had learned something that applied to what I was feeling at the time. That was extremely effective for me. It gave me the opportunity to feel like I was doing the study we're encouraged to do, and read through the scriptures... but it also gave me the opportunity to feel like God was speaking to me through the scriptures and aiding me in my life. That's something I'd like to reinstate in my daily routine.

Testimony. What to say about testimony. It wasn't until sometime during my freshman year of high school that I really felt like I gained a testimony. And I suppose in some respects my method wasn't very traditional. I began researching the other big religions out there. I began considering their doctrines and how they would affect my life. I found a lot of truths and a lot of peace in the doctrines of other religions. I started reading the Torah, the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita. And they are wonderful books. I thought the Catholic idea of selecting a Saint at Confirmation was fascinating. But the more I researched other religions, the stronger my impression was that I was meant to be in the very same religion I had been born into. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was meant to be mormon. That was true. It still is true.

Now that doesn't mean I didn't fall after that realization. That doesn't mean I didn't have to gain my testimony again and again after that. But that's the moment I think of when I think of gaining a testimony. I remember a time in my life when I thought... Yes. I could leave the church. That's a choice I have. I don't have to abide by its precepts. I don't have to do anything. And in that moment I realized something like those witnesses of the Book of Mormon that ended up leaving the church... I realized that no matter what... that if I left the church, I would do so knowing that it was true. I realized that my testimony had become something that couldn't be lost merely by a desire to stray. And that was an important moment in the foundation of my testimony as well. I think the key for me... is not just knowing that I have a testimony, but I have to be applying it to my life at all times. If I haven't applied it to my life that very day, then I can't bear testimony. And that's something I need to do more often.

Gratitude. My life is just like everybody else's. It's had ups and its had downs. My trials are my own trials just as your trials are yours. And every trial affects us personally. I think some people don't realize that there are some trials we never "get over" and the idea that someone expects me to just get over certain things in my life is honestly infuriating. But that doesn't mean we dwell on them. That doesn't mean we feel ungrateful for them. That doesn't mean we don't learn from them, or bless others through them. I don't really think trials make you stronger. I think that if you can apply your testimony to your trials, that your testimony makes you stronger. Hopefully that makes sense. Anyway... my thing here, is that I want to feel more gratitude in my heart. I remember a time sitting in my bed at home as a teenager realizing that I was just overcome with a sense of gratitude. And that sense of gratitude is what spurred me to share my testimony so often. It was feeling grateful that made me want to share that feeling with others. And gratitude in my opinion is the best remedy for sadness, depression, fear. Gratitude is like a wonderful cure all.

Finally, I would like to scatter sunshine. What is gratitude, what is testimony, what is prayer, if I am not helping someone else feel better every day? If I can't make someone else smile, feel loved and cherished... what am I doing? That is by far the thing that gives me the greatest sense of purpose in my life. I love it when someone calls me in the middle of the night because they knew I wouldn't mind. They knew I would rather talk to them all night, or drive over to their house because they needed me. There are few things so powerful as the knowledge that you have been able to love someone well enough that they trust you to love them when they feel vulnerable. That' one of my strongest priorities in life and I have got to improve. I need to spread that sense of gratitude, testimony, and joy every day. I need to make someone smile every day. And it doesn't help that making someone else smile usually makes me smile too. I'm pretty sure God didn't send me to Earth to make anyone feel burdened or saddened.

Anyway... I won't go into the specific details of my goals like I talked about in my last post. I think for now just sharing the topics will do. But those are my goals. It's about becoming a better me. It's not about it being a new year. It's about feeling the impression that I needed to work on things, and then acting on it. It's about reminding myself all the time to work on those things. I'm pretty sure those will pretty much be the subject of my goals for the rest of my life... maybe plus a few more just to mix it up, but you get the idea. So I guess you can feel free to call me out if what you're witnessing in my behavior doesn't match up to one of these goals. Because I need to be honest with myself and others, and I need others to be honest with me too.

Here's to friendship, growth and faith.
Love ya'll!

Never Resolutions but Always Goals

I have never been a big fan of "New Years Resolutions" ... making goals under that premise seems to me.. like making a goal with a pre-prepared excuse for why you didn't carry it out. And that just seems silly. So why not just make a goal and call it what it is... a goal? I also think it's silly to say "this is my goal for the year." At least for myself, if I were to do that, then I'd tell myself that I had the whole year to procrastinate before it was time to evaluate my progress. I think its better to re-evaluate every month or every couple months. You can have the same goal every month for a year, but that way you're always thinking about it.

I am a Social Work major. And this last semester, that meant taking a class in which we had to write treatment plans for our theoretical clients (in this case, specifically children). And, I may or may not have been told by the professor that I was the best out of the class at writing said treatment plans ;) It's moments like that that give me a moment to think to myself "Maybe this really is meant to be my major." Aanyway.. these treatment plans were evaluated on a lot of criteria, but for now I'd like to focus on the fact that they were required to be time limited, objective, and reasonable.

Time limited merely means that you must set a date by which you hope these goals are achieved. This could be three weeks from now, or a year from now. For the purpose of our treatment plans, we had several long term goals (such as a year from now), and then we determined a handful of short term goals that were designed to help the client reach the long term goal. The long term goal could not even be achieved without achieving the short term goals. I think that's one of the major flaws of New Years resolutions. Everyone focuses on the long term goal, but no one bothers to determine the short term goals and interventions they are going to implement in order to reach those long term goals. Doomed for failure.

Objective meant that we had to write each of the goals for our clients in such a way that no matter who was reading that goal, it meant exactly the same thing. No biasing language. No language that could be interpreted in any way. For personal goals I'm not sure how important this is since it's not like I'm showcasing my goals to a caseworker, a judge, a jury, or anything like that. But, I think it's important to define our goals in a clear and concise way so that we know exactly what we're hoping to achieve instead of some vague generalization like "I'm going to get in shape" ... I don't even know what that means with interpretation, let alone without interpretation!

Reasonable. This is one of the biggest things. This is one of the areas of treatment planning that I struggled a little bit in. And I think this is something everyone struggles in when making their resolutions as well. I might make a goal like "I will do X three times a week for six weeks by such and such a date." Time limited. Objective. But is it reasonable? Your first thought might be, well it can't be too hard to do something three times a week, right? So of course it's reasonable. However, if I miss one day, screw up one week... then I can no longer accomplish the goal! This is where so many people fall in their "new years resolutions." Well, I already ate dessert once this month, so now my goal is ruined, so I might as well give up. Or whatever the applicable goal is. That's one of the only mistakes I made in my final treatment plan for this class I mentioned! It would have been better to design the goal to say "I will do X three times a week for at least five out of six weeks by such and such a date." This way I have allowed a little room for mistakes. This way I can still say, "Hey, I missed this week, but now I can resolve once more to completing this goal!"

Anyway... this probably seems a little bit like Emily standing on a soap box... but it was just something I've been thinking about. Hopefully it gives some food for thought when regarding New Years Resolutions and Goals. Soooo there ya go.

"The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."
-Robert Frost

Relative Life

I find it amazing that no matter the hardships or trials we face we seem to underplay them for others. I think its amazing that we move past them at all. And sometimes I find it amazing that we don't share them more often to testify that trials are overcome. I mean no one wants to focus on gloom or doom... but hopefully we don't put the focus in our lives on the gloom and doom, but instead on the feelings afterwards. I think of the times I have helped friends overcome their experiences with abuse or pain and I smile. And could I have helped them in the same way if not for my own life story? Well who knows anyway since it can't be undone! Everyone's experienced pain and no matter what the cause of that pain was... for them it was real. For them it might have been the only truth they felt in that moment. For anyone else to underplay that... is unjust and unkind. One could reasonably say that it's just plain stupid. Or at least I would say that. Because even looking back... comparing my life story to those I've known and I think... "Oh how trivial. I should get over it!" ... I feel as though I've overcome those trials as best I can, but that doesn't mean I don't still feel the pain of it. One of my friends once said that she knew shortly after meeting me that I had experienced pain because how else could I be so happy? Without pain there is no joy. Opposition in all things as they say... And who wouldn't be grateful for the joy in their lives? So therefore... who wouldn't want to experience pain... at least every now and then?

People tell you that their lives are boring or that they have nothing interesting to tell you about themselves... but I'm not sure that's ever true. Everyone experiences those small seemingly meaningless moments of happiness that mean something to them. It's just a matter of feeling comfortable letting someone else in on those moments, whether they are happy or sad. I love being allowed to see the things about people's lives that they don't broadcast. I love it when people are truly honest about their life, their feelings...when they are truly genuine with you. There are no moments more special than that. Life is all relative and I don't think we should ever ever forget that. Moral of the story... life stories are precious no matter what the story is. And anyone should feel privileged for getting to share in one. So here's a New Years toast... here's hoping I can meet honest, genuine people, and that I can be just as honest and genuine with them.